Critique and Advice; the treadmill of adventuring.

I'm just going to write my thoughts as I listen to the podcast. Sorry if my thoughts are all jumbled I'm just stopping and writing whenever I feel I have a comment.

After typing this out edit: Whoops there was a lot to comment about.

So I got to listening to the podcast and I quite agree with a lot Jack had to say. I always felt that adventures were nothing like books or the normal comic book UNTIL they were finished. Until then they're more like a roleplaying game where everyone is controlling one more more characters jointly and (hopefully) cooperatively. That's why yes, it's true. It won't have the polishness of a book, but I don't think it can't be polished. (like a comment I saw earlier here say.)

I think a forum adventure can have a sense of polish and most forum adventure makers, as they learn about how they make their adventure and how to update most adventure makers will learn how to make their adventure as polished as possible before the update gets pushed. For example, right now I'm going through a redux rewrite (I wouldn't recommend rewriting/doing your adventure before you're finished but because I'm mirroring the whole thing to its own website its a case of "might as well") and one thing I noticed is that early on lots of the updates need total rewrites, they're too messy, or they give useless info that never comes up again, but the later updates don't because I learned over time "No I don't need to introduce random info I'll never use again" and "No I shouldn't slam a wacky joke right here and thus break up the narration and the user's immersion".

This is both a case of learning better writing and also learning how to forum adventure better. Such as, early on I stopped the updates at places where the only choice was "Open the door" or "The obvious answer" now I no longer do that because it doesn't really work and I know readers don't want to state the obvious. (Unless of course I'm trying to buy up time or cause tension.)

Triple time machines is now my favorite string of words. Also I agree. Do not put time travel in a story unless you're really ready to deal with it and the readers messing with it, or if you're going to bar the readers from suggesting anything relating to the timetravel and you have already mapped it all out.

I like that jack and me seem to have the sameish way of planning an update. Procrastinate. > Procrastinate again. > Yeah ok type it out, put notes, ect. > "Yeah that's good enough." (- a lot of the drawing stuff because of Fortuna's layout)

I love the idea of Jack doing short stories. I want that to happen. I'd love to see a few comics that don't have the adventure format too, but that might be because I'm a monthly reader of ANL and thus don't get to make many suggestions. I feel ANL reads a lot better when reading big chunks at once and as such I am more then willing to sacrifice the power to suggest to get a better picture of the story. Which is also why I wouldn't mind more "normal" comic / story.

I'm building my own site like jack is from the ground up. While I do recommend using wordpress like Jack said....well I tried to use wordpress and it made everything look like every other webcomic place. Which works! But only if you're looking for that feeling. I didn't want that feeling and honestly working on things from the ground up works better for what I'm doing, but like jack said, yes if you're making a webcomic site try wordpress first! If wordpress doesn't work for you and you're really willing to learn some coding, then well, do it! Heck, because I didn't go with wordpress I'm able to put the Cosmosdex (a fictional encyclopedia that pairs with Fortuna) on the site instead of some random google doc. Also I needed custom code for cookie giving so characters could remember your name of find out what time it is and tell you you need to turn off the game and sleep.

"If you have too many joke suggestions take them and make terrible things happen." I feel you. I love joke suggestions (But rarely use them) but I think it's nice to have a fun reminder time to time about how badly they can go.



Oh geez. I'm only 30 minutes in and there was already so much to say. Let me attempt to condense my thoughts for the next hour.



ANL spoiler zone

Show Content

SpoilerI completely forgot that ANL was mostly in french.

Aaaahahahaha I do love that everyone suggested to leave Kendra. I suppose it was because we knew so little about her and things looked so dire. It was merely a case of "us or them" where attempting to save them looked like it would kill us AND them. I have ended up with similar situations where I think the readers would suggest "X", but they go on the suggest "5" which throws me for a fun loop.

Bina suggestions for Bina and Kendra suggestions for Kendra is a very nice way to put it. As people get to learn about a character they tend to suggest more in character. I also noticed how Bina changed over the course of the story and always thought that was really cool.

An old lady fighting monsters with a scarf is what I've always wanted in this world.

Keeping themes is totally hard and I think it's real cool "How do you spot a monster" is a theme that keeps going. I love me some constant themes.

I also totally respected the retcon you made. While killing Bina was a shocker and I was excited to see what would happen, but after thinking and looking back at it I have to agree. Man that section was really jarring. I liked it before because it was jarring and thus it made it cool and out there, but looking at it as a part of a story I can see why it was removed.

I have no idea if Jack will see this but I had the same issue with one of my cookies. Set only certain pages to "update" the cookie. So people can mostly jump back and forth with no issues. Also set it so the first cookies cannot overwrite the future ones. So if page one gives you a cookie with the number 1, and the latest page updates the cookie with the number 10, set it so the page 1 cookie setter (which sets the number 1) can never overwrite the cookie if it has a bigger number then it. Then put on the first page a link to a cookie deleter so people can easily delete it if they want to do a full wipe reread.

At least that's how it works for me and php, not sure if the stuff you use would allow that.


"in simplest terms tell us about all the Bina timelines."
I think my response to that would have been "Sure, but first we need to talk about parallel universes."

I just came away more confused person is me. I remember looking at the diagram and going "Ah yes. I...uh...hmmmmmmm...yes."

I used to be convinced that Kendra was the green lady but I starting to point at Bina a little more.

"I don't expect to get to year 4." Finally I know what to set the time machine for. Year 5.

I thought when Bina pointed and said "The botfly is there" was the start of the end too. Wooooooooo.

I always wondered if the dog being human like was on purpose. I'm glad it is.

"Throw a ton of stuff on the floor and then pick it up and explain it if it makes sense."
Aaaaaaall the time.

The color door choice, oh boy. Yeah they never work in adventures. There's nothing to do or guess.

"What music would you suggest for ANL"
My time HAS COME. The Cat Lady is a pretty good sound track for ANL. I listen to it during my monthly readings.

I think no one has suggested using the time machine because time travel is confusing and evil and it feels easier to solve the problem by hand.


I also recommend sprites. I use them all the time and while I feel lazy, I can update faster and sleep on time.

I suggest livestreaming at midnight. Trust me you'll get tons of people at midnight. At least I can say so from my own livestreams.

I like congratulating people from reading my adventure too. Like wowwy it's real important to congratulate new readers.

TLDR: I have too much to say about adventure making and also this was a good episode I can't believe I didn't listen to it before. Also I love ANL.

"Adventures are weird." - Jack